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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OtherChap who wrote (24843)	11/6/1998 10:07:00 PM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164685

CtherChap, As usual, you're jabbering.

To: OtherChap who wrote (24843)	11/7/1998 4:39:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164685

Article 1 of 200 Techno File/Infotech The Amazon .Com Of Cyberbabies Everyone wants to sell online. So now there's a Website where you can buy bibs, cribs, and car seats. Skeptical? Intel's one of the company's big backers. Erick Schonfeld 11/23/98 Fortune Magazine Time Inc. Page 264 (Copyright 1998) Last month, Matt Glickman and Mark Selcow made a bid to turn their cool Website, www.babycenter.com, into a cool business. Already one of the most popular Net sites for information about pregnancy and early child rearing, BabyCenter is now also an online store. New parents can buy everything from strollers and cribs to breast pumps. "We want to be the Amazon .com of baby products," says President Selcow. Granted, everyone online wants to be the Amazon .com of something. But the baby business is a pretty promising niche. Having a baby is one of those major life transitions that marketers refer to as a "branding moment." The parents of the four million new babies born in the U.S. every year spend about $7,000 on car seats, rattles, teething rings, and other baby gear. Glickman and Selcow want to be there for the 35% who are online, helping them with useful data, then selling them the stuff they've decided they need. Founded only two years ago in CEO Glickman's spare bedroom (now his daughter Emma's digs), the still-private company recently raised $10 million from Intel and four venture capital firms to help its push into E-commerce. According to Glickman, half a million moms and moms-to-be log on every month. "When you are pregnant," notes Glickman, "you immediately start seeking out information. A lot of people turn to us even before they see their doctor." The site is filled with original articles, penned by a staff of a dozen women writers, whose work is reviewed by a panel of doctors. Visitors can find pieces on pregnancy and parenting, and chat rooms and bulletin boards with debates such as "Stay at Home vs. Back to Work," "Circumcision," and FORTUNE's personal favorite, "What's Your View on Spanking?" There's even a baby-naming tool that can search for names by ethnicity, sound, meaning, and popularity. Some prospective parents test potential names by letting visitors vote thumbs up or thumbs down on their choice of, say, Keenan over Liam. Other tools include customizable ovulation and pregnancy calendars. Tailored content like this lets advertisers target customers, one reason why Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Clorox are advertisers. Clorox sponsors a section on how to properly disinfect your house to make it baby-safe, while Charles Schwab offers an interactive college-savings calculator. Even with all those high- profile advertisers, BabyCenter will make less than $5 million in revenues this year. Which helps explain why this infant of a site is looking to transform itself into an Amazon .